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Sustainable Process Development Chemical Engineers are today focusing their disciplines on the use of alternative feedstocks such as biomass and societal waste to produce chemicals and energy. Their aim is to use less carbon in the manufacturing processes by making them more carbon efficient and these lower carbon processes is sometimes termed "Green Chemistry" or sustainable processing. An example of this is the work of the Northeast of England Bioresources Group (NEBR) created by the members of the Northeast of England Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC). Their work is aimed at creating the future biorefinery[3] and other opportunities for energy and products to be manufactured from biomass and waste materials.[4] An example where such work has brought results is with Coca Cola who have already required the commodity chemical polyethylene terephthalate (PET) to be produced in a more environmentally friendly way for use in their soft drinks bottles and their product "PlantBottle" was introduced in 2009.[5] Chemical Engineering Locations In the 21st century most professional Chemical Engineers work in contract engineering companies or in the process industry companies that such engineering contractors serve. These are Commodity-speciality-fine chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, polymer and renewable energy and sustainable materials companies. Many such companies can be found clustered around the large scale infrastructure that these industries need, such as ports, power stations, storage facilities, pipelines etc. This infrastructure is particularly important to commodity and petrochemical companies. An example of such a location is on Teesside in the Northeast of the United Kingdom where the process industry companies and the engineering companies collaborate through membership of the Northeast of England Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC). In this region, as well as the process industry companies themselves, there is a particularly high number of engineering suppliers supporting the sector. This includes offices of global suppliers like ABB, Jacobs, AMEC and Foster Wheeler as well as many local firms that also serve the industry internationally,such as KHome International, Cordell, Hertel etc. Chemical Engineers also contribute to industry via specialist technology companies again examples in the NEPIC Cluster are companies such as DRD Power, and CompactGTL. One report has suggested that the highest concentration of such knowledge intensive businesses (KIBS) in Europe[6] can be found in Northeast England and a significant number of their 14000 employees are chemical engineers. In locations such as this Chemical Engineers share best practice through local sub-groups of their Professional Institution. The Teesside sub-group of the Institution of Chemical Engineers regularly meet to present updates on technical and operational issues and to share best practice. Furthermore Chemical Engineering degree courses and research takes place at the local universities such as Teesside University[7] and Newcastle University.[8] |
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